Sachs Harbour (May 22/06) - Residents of this Beaufort Sea community had their first meeting with federal officials to discuss how to tear down a 40-year-old oil and gas exploration site on their island.

The Johnson Point site is on Banks Island. Because it is 270 kilometres northeast of Sachs Harbour, that puts it more or less in the residents' backyard.

Built in the 1960s on the shore of Prince of Wales Strait, it was operational as a staging area complete with a tank farm until the 1980s.

The April 25 meeting saw 20 people talk to Department of Indian and Northern Affairs staff about what's to be done.

"Now the process has started, the community is quite pleased," said David Haogak, president of the Sachs Harbour Hunters and Trappers Committee.

"This was the first full community meeting on the project," said Emma Pike, project manager, although there had already been informal discussions with the Hunters and Trappers Committee.

"The community has been asking to have the site cleared up since it was abandoned, but we never really got an answer as to who owns it or who was going to clean it up," Haogak said of previous efforts.

The site is "rather unique," Pike said. "It's not often you find an abandoned exploration site with a full tank farm."

Dealing with it is similar to cleaning up Distant Early Warning (DEW Line) radar sites, or abandoned mine sites, but these fall under a different remediation category, Pike said.

So far, the only thing for certain is that the 90,000 litres of fuel left in 19 fuel tanks of various sizes - they range between six and eight metres high, with capacities between 90,000 and 1.6 million litres - will be incinerated this summer, Pike said.

A tender has been issued calling for companies to undertake that and to dismantle the tanks and other items: equipment, old trailers and other buildings.

As well as steel from the tanks, there is "a minor amount" of asbestos, lead-based paint, and other hazardous materials such as PCBs (cooling machine liquids), Pike explained.

"Those attending the meeting have a lot of information to contribute," Pike said of getting up to speed on traditional knowledge about what animals are in the immediate area, how the site was used historically and what kind of hunting was done in the area.

"It was used as a hunting place in the past," Haogak said. "The biggest lakes on the island are in the immediate area."

This will all play into the final clean-up of the site.

"We don't have the full scope of what we're trying to address yet," Pike said. "We still have to complete a full site assessment," which will be done this summer.

The timeline is to develop that clean-up plan and get regulatory approvals next year, then spend one or two more years in dismantling and shipping out the site's materials.

That's fine with Sachs Harbour.

And while the recycling-minded might want to get their hands on 90,000 litres of fuel, Pike says the age of the fuel makes it of little use.

"Oxidation is not our friend," said Pike, to explain why "old" fuel may burn if you toss a match at it, but could damage any motors powered by it. And it's just too far away.

"You could recycle it, but the cost to get it out of there is not worth the expense," Haogak explained. "You'd have to use a barge and the place never melts, so you'd have to do it without doing any damage."

A special burner will be brought in to fire the fuel without causing any smoke, Haogak said.